Birdcraft: America's First Bird Sanctuary
Near Bridgeport Stamford, Connecticut
In nineteen fourteen a woman named Mabel Osgood Wright opened a six-acre bird refuge in Fairfield that became the oldest private songbird sanctuary in the United States. Wright was a naturalist, novelist, and co-founder of the Connecticut Audubon Society, and she was furious that milliners were slaughtering egrets and songbirds by the millions to decorate women's hats. Her answer was Birdcraft: a refuge with ponds, plantings, and a small museum of mounted specimens to teach the public what they were losing.
It worked. The Connecticut Audubon Society she led backed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of nineteen eighteen, which protected migratory birds. The sanctuary is still open and still wild, tucked inside a Fairfield neighborhood, a pocket of planted, protected habitat.
